Who knows about the awards?

The highlight of the American Library Association’s Midwinter meeting for children’s librarians every year is the annual awards ceremonies. The ceremony is always held early in the morning in front of a packed room full of conference-weary attendees,who wait hopefully for the announcements. Many libraries hold mock-Newbery events prior to the conference in which staff and patrons can vote on the books they think should be awarded the Newbery Medal, so everyone has a stake in the outcome. The ALA awards are the most prestigious award childrens books can get in America. This year’s event happened this week in Dallas, Texas.

News of the winners of the award spreads quickly throughout libraryland. If you haven’t heard, then check these books out. Jack Gantos won the Newbery Medal for his novel Dead End in Norvelt and Chris Raschka won the Caldecott award for the best children’s book illustrations for his wordless picture book A Ball for Daisy.

Normally publicity about the award would spread quickly in print and on TV. The New York Times and other mainstream papers carried stories about the winners. As the Publishers Weekly pointed out however, the usually reliable Today show on NBC did not interview the winners. PW sounds a bitter note about how children’s literature is undervalued and many of us will agree. Parents are often the last people to learn about the medal winners, yet many of them like to buy good books for children’s birthdays or take them out of the library for children. Lots more parents watch TV than read the print newspapers. It is a shame that important new children’s books are not being publicized on the shows that people watch.

Perhaps it’s time for librarians, teachers, and others who care about books for children to write to NBC and the other networks and tell them what they are missing. If we are going to keep children reading and writers and illustrators producing great books for them, we have to urge the media to publicize the best that is being produced. In the meantime we can publicize the books in our libraries and on our Facebook pages and Tweets. Let's make our voices heard in support of children's books and reading!

Today is Medal Day

As many children's librarians already know, today is the day when the winners of the ALA Children's literature awards are announced. The Association of Library Services to Children has responsibility for choosing the award winners through a complex committee system. Each award has its own committee, elected by AlSC members--these committee appointments are among the most cherished assignments in the organization's mandate. Most of the members are children's librarians with several (sometimes many) years of professional experience with a few other professionals such as instructors in LIS schools sometimes included. All year long members read and think about a long list of books recommended by publishers, librarians, and others. It's a joke at ALA conferences that you can pick out the Newbery committee members because they are constantly reading a book, even on the bus shuttles between hotels. At conferences, the committee members meet for long sessions of discussion and voting. Unlike most ALA committees, these meetings are closed. Finally the whole process culminates in the announcements of the awards on the Monday morning of ALA's Midwinter Conference. Today this event occurred in San Diego.

I was lucky enough to attend the award announcements this morning at the Convention Center. In a large, dimly lit ballroom, hundreds of people gathered at 7:00 AM for the announcements. A variety of awards were announced (you can see the complete list at www.ala.org) but the culminating announcement came with the Caldecott and the Newbery Medal winners.

Caldecott Award for the best in illustration went to A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE illlustrated by Erin E. Stead and published by Roaring Brook Press. The Newbery Medal went to MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool, published by Delacorte Press. Shouts and cheers arouse from librarians and from the winning publishers' reps in the auditorium. The large TV screens at the front showed the jackets of each winner, and everyone departed to celebrate with coffee and muffins for a good morning's work.

Later this week I'll talk about some of the other award winners.

Echoes of 19th century frights

When Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Award last year for The Graveyard Book, many librarians hailed or deplored it as a new direction in children's literary awards. Even though his earlier book Coraline had been a success with both children and adults. Now a profile in the New Yorker tells the story of how Gaiman developed his style and his following. Beginning with comics he has moved on to use his blogs and his publications to build a huge audience, yet he has not yet been recognized as an important writer. Perhaps this New Yorker piece will do the trick. Rather than bringing children's literature something entirely new, Gaiman has drawn on themes from earlier writers, like the long-forgotten Lucy Clifford mentioned in the article and the more famous Rudyard Kipling, to write intriguing stories that capture modern sensibilities. It's another reminder that literature seldom creates something entirely new but builds on lasting interests and fears that never go out of date. Librarians should recognize that Gaiman is a fresh new voice building a bridge between the past and present for today's children.

Watch the award ceremony

Every year hundreds of children's librarians pack an auditorium in whatever city is holding the ALA conference to hear which books have won the Newbery and Caldecott medals. In olden days, after the announcement was made, people would rush off to find a phone booth to call back to their library and give the great news. Recently, of course, there's been so such scramble for communications. Interested people can watch the awards on the website or follow them on twitter by going to the handy link that ALSC has posted for the awards ceremony. Being librarians, the committee has chosen an early hour--7:45 AM EST--on Monday, Jan. 18 to announce the awards. How many people on the West Coast will be up at 4:45 to pay attention? It doesn't really matter. Whether you are on time or late, it's worth clicking on and finding out which lucky authors and publishers will be celebrating. The awards will bring thousands of new sales to the prizewinning books and hours of pleasure to child readers.

Guessing the odds

The award season for children's books is upon us. In a few days the Newbery and Caldecott winners will be announced at the American Library Association's meeting in Boston. Librarians around the country have been talking about which of the hundreds of books published in 2009 will will the coveted awards. For those who want an early peek at how the odds are going, Publisher's Weekly has prepared an article based on many of the popular children's book blogs. Choices vary widely, but some predictions look quite firm. The busy award committees will be meeting long hours in Boston, but it's quite likely they will come up with the same winners predicted on blogs. If you want to prepare for the award announcements on Monday, you might want to spend the weekend reading some of the titles mentioned in the PW roundup.